-cross posted at The Shining City on a Hill Townhall Blog
Either Obama’s presidency is over or life as we know it in America ends in November 2012. That’s the choice. Given how horrible Obama has been as president, there is no longer a strong expectation that he will win reelection in 2012. A nation dissatisfied during a time of economic hardship almost always never reelects the incumbent. It is highly likely that our next president will be selected through the Republican primary process.
Should Sarah Palin run and get the nomination, many who have had their doubts or who have allowed themselves to be misled by the lying media will be forced to make a choice between four more years of high unemployment, high gas prices, high debt and low national self esteem or the uncertainty that they think may come with electing the former governor of Alaska. Putting all Palin bias aside either way, can anyone honestly say based on her record as governor that she would be worse than what we have now?
Let’s start with dispelling the notion that Sarah Palin has been damaged by the press and that she is too divisive to win. The time has come to debunk once and for all the notion that Sarah Palin would be destroyed by the Obama campaign and the media should she win the nomination.
This notion is preposterous if one believes that if someone other than Sarah Palin was to win the nomination that they would somehow not be subject to the same spears and arrows that she would.
Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin at Politico point out something that we bitter recipients of the 2008 electoral loss already know: Obama’s campaigns have always been run by street thugs whose strategy has always favored the politics of personal destruction over the politics of winning in the arena of ideas. If you think things are going to be easier if Romney wins the nomination instead of Palin, think again.
“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.
The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”
“First, they’ve got to like you, and there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Chicago Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.”
A senior Obama adviser was even more cutting, suggesting that the Republican’s personal awkwardness will turn off voters.
“There’s a weirdness factor with Romney, and it remains to be seen how he wears with the public,” the adviser said, noting that the contrasts they’d drive between the president and the former Massachusetts governor would be “based on character to a great extent.”While it is ultimately the right of every Republican voter to choose their own candidate and vote them through the primary system, whoever the nominee is will be on the chopping block. As Republicans and conservatives, we cannot allow the media or the Obama campaign to choose our nominee through psychological operations. We, and whoever our candidate is, will have to walk through the fire to get the prize. If we are courageous, and if we dismiss the media in favor of doing our own research, the Obama smear apparatus will fail.
The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession — a sort of political Gordon Gekko.
“He was very, very good at making a profit for himself and his partners but not nearly as good [at] saving jobs for communities,” said David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist. “His is very much the profile of what we’ve seen in the last decade on Wall Street. He was about making money. And that’s fine. But often times, he made it at the expense of jobs in communities.”
We can take a chance on having any of the GOP candidates walk through the gauntlet if we’re strong. The first person who reaches the gates of the shining city holds them open for all. But consider the idea that the best way to short circuit the Obama campaign and media lies in nominating a candidate who has already walked that gauntlet and survived.
Don't let the head to head polls deter you on a Palin candidacy either. The head to head polls showed Ronald Reagan as the worst candidate to run against Jimmy Carter. When it came down to crunch time, the American people weren't willing to go another four years of misery and malaise. The press may not abandon Obama the way they abandoned Carter then, but the people still will.
It will have to be argued further, and these points hammered home harder should Palin win the nomination. But those arguments are there for political operatives on our side to use in her favor. The path of least resistance to defeating Obama is Sarah Palin, even if that path of least resistance is just slightly less resistant than the one any of the other candidates would have to take.
The regular “Jay walker” on the street doesn’t know Romney’s weaknesses yet or those of the other candidates. But, they know Palin’s weaknesses. That should serve as proof positive of how effective a complicit media can be when teamed up with a gangsta campaign like the one Obama had in 2008 and which he will have again in 2012 if we let them get away with it again.
Since the media and the Obama campaign have exhausted the playbook on her, a smear campaign against Sarah Palin in 2012 won’t hold with voters who already know that a lot of what has been thrown at her was politically motivated. Many who thought ill of her following the 2008 campaign are rethinking their positions given the success she has had since then.
The release of the emails she sent while governor and the information provided in the movie “The Undefeated” is being digested by reasonable people who may have been misinformed about her record. Not everyone who thinks Palin’s not presidential timber is a kool aid drinking liberal. Like Ronald Reagan said, once given the facts, the American people make the right decision every time.
It’s okay for those who may have doubted to come around again. It’s not their fault. The media lied to them. There's no loss in face for anyone who has a change of heart about her. She is “the political fugitive” and the one armed man is David Axelrod. Just as that movie ended, she will be vindicated.
Run Romney or any other candidate for that matter, and you give the Obama campaign and the media fresh meat. With new lies based on different events, the media and the campaign can place fresh doubts in the minds of voters who could be made to worry about Romney flip flopping, Rick Perry’s positions on illegal immigration or Michele Bachmann’s headaches. Yes, we can be strong and yes we can fight it. But it will require new material. Palin’s material is already written and ready to go.
This is not to say that the primary reason to run Palin is because she’s already been completely vetted. This is not to say the other candidates aren’t good candidates or they should be disqualified because of their weaknesses. The real reason to run Palin is because she is genuine and offers us the best chance of electing someone who is not beholden to any interest – even if it’s a good interest like evangelicals or business people. The fact that she has proven that she can withstand a smear campaign that would have destroyed most other candidates in advance of their next run is simply a bonus and a nice bonus at that.
Imagine how great a candidate Dan Quayle would have been if he had been able to overcome a similar smear campaign against him in the 1992 election. Quayle was probably one of the most intelligent and ideologically sound conservatives of his time, yet conservatives were not as aware as they are now of how the Left and the media have been trying to gain power through thought control.
On paper, Palin should have been as done as Quayle was. The fact that she risked it all by resigning her governorship so she could spend the next 2 ½ years rebuilding her image, getting her message out to the voters via her books, her speeches, her Facebook page and her appearances on Fox News is a testament to her strength and ultimately her presidential mettle.
If anything, it is her ability to still be a powerful figure on the political stage after all the relentless hits and smears combined with her genuine servant’s heart that is beholden to no special interest that better qualifies her to be president over the rest of the field.
Her ability to be where she is now in status is the result of some kind of amazing out of the box super-human resiliency that is rarely seen in people beaten down as badly as she was. Anyone who can withstand what she has and rise from the wreckage to cast the ashes back in their eyes is beyond presidential material as far as I’m concerned. She is a once in a several generation phenomenon that just happened to occur statistically sooner than expected given how recently we had the last one, Ronald Reagan.
We should not look at Palin as a delicate flower or as a candidate that can’t command enough voter support to overcome a president who is basically leading America into decline and ultimately into insolvency. Instead, we should see this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. With Palin, you not only take down the radical socialist agenda of the American Left, you also take down the business as usual crony capitalism of the center.
In the past, winning elections for the Republicans was an exercise in defeating liberalism and socialism so that business as usual could continue in Washington where the political class could continue to enjoy the trappings of power while the rest of us were relatively unimpeded as we worked hard at our jobs and businesses. Without the serious threat like the one we have now from a Manchurian shadow party candidate that is dismantling our entire way of life, many of the eyes that are on this upcoming election would be looking at other things instead.
Since it was business as usual that got us into this mess in the first place, why not just clean house completely? Why not just completely renew and restore the thing to the way it was supposed to be when envisioned by our Founders?
Stopping the political games of earmarks and special interests used to be an exercise in futility for the average voter, particularly as long as their businesses or jobs weren’t be stifled by burdensome regulations or a choked off capital market the way they are now. In a normal year, RINOs and center right Republicans are able to win elections and stay in favor with their constituents because they are a better alternative to liberalism and socialism. Now that we have a Tea Party, we are finding that we can reject both options in favor of real free enterprise and a true adherence to Constitutional principles.
This is a rare opportunity for America to change its political system not by discarding it or fundamentally transforming it, but by changing the players themselves. By sending citizen politicians and people who will not be corrupted to Washington, the American people can send a message to establishment Democrats and Republicans alike that the golden age of the fat cats stuffing themselves at the taxpayer funded trough is over.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for those of us who have always hated crony capitalism to finally become part of a coalition to end it. We can truly kill both birds with one pull of the lever. We can defeat radical socialism and crony capitalism by electing Sarah Palin president.
We can defeat socialism with the pull of a lever next to any of the other candidates’ names (and if we have to, we will). But there will be no guarantee that we can kill crony capitalism or elitism if we do that. We can risk returning to business as usual after Obama is booted out or we can begin a new age in America where the opportunity for prosperity is truly open to all, not just those who get the wealth redistributed to them or who are affiliated with mismanaged businesses who just happen to be too big or too entrenched to fail.
We need the political version of Jesus walking into the Temple and flipping the tables to get the point across that business as usual is no longer acceptable and that a new way of doing things is going to take place. This is not to make any comparisons with the Almighty, but rather more to make the point that if you want to end the corruption and the nonsense in Washington, someone is going to have to get pissed off and make it happen. If you can picture any of the other candidates going in there and flipping the tables better than the way Sarah Palin would, then vote for them and hope you’re right. As for me, Sarah Palin is the best bet.
Americans are angry. They are frustrated. Nothing should give us more pleasure than watching our country being restored while those that have destroyed it are cast by the wayside, hoisted out by their pants.
Nothing would be sweeter than to watch all those morons who screwed up the lives of millions of Americans with their elitism, statism, burdensome regulations and fiscal mismanagement get thrown out into the political street with their belongings flung behind them. Think about the people up in Alaska who went to jail because Sarah Palin had the balls to root out the corruption. Let’s send her to Washington to do it again, this time for all of us.
Read:
As the liberal light flickers out, ours grows brighter
Obama's 2012 Strategy: Slash and Burn
The Obama campaign may try to make 2012 all about character. Republicans will cast the contest as a referendum on the incumbent. I say, how about both? Let's highlight the Obama Administration's myriad failures on policy (Obamacare, stimulus, debt explosion, unemployment, downgrade, mortgage bailouts, serial ally alienation, Libya) -- and if his camp insists on making it a character contest, let's revisit some of the very legitimate character/association questions that were dismissed as "smears" and "distractions" from the "real issues" in 2008. This could be a devastating one-two punch: Not only isn't Barack Obama a successful president, Joe and Jane Taxpayer, he also isn't the cool, smooth, post-partisan guy that inspired you four years ago. It's time to move on. If that message penetrates America's collective psyche, Obama is finished.
Even the Atlantic’s Joshua Green Concedes “Fiscal Improvement Under” Palin Is “Largely” Why “Moody’s Increased Alaska’s Credit Rating”
Palin's Fiscal Record as Governor Is the Strongest in the GOP Field
Listen to Patrick's World USA Wednesday night 8/10/11 at 11pm ET 8pm PT. My guests are Gary P. Jackson of A Time For Choosing and Whitney Pitcher who wrote this blog post that was retweeted by Sarah Palin.
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